The increased prevalence and technical capabilities of smartphone cameras and other portable camera devices has dramatically increased the ease with which people can capture digital photographs and videos. Indeed, many smartphone users often capture hundreds or thousands of digital visual media items each year, resulting in tens of thousands of digital visual media items stored on smartphones, personal computers, or cloud storage devices. The expanding volume of digital images captured and stored by users makes it increasingly difficult to browse, search, and otherwise manage personal digital image repositories.
To assist in managing captured digital images, conventional systems typically allow users to browse the users' digital images within an image application. In particular, some conventional systems create thumbnail or preview versions of the digital images to display a plurality of digital images in a limited visual space, such as a digital photo catalog. For example, conventional systems often crop the digital images to create preview images of one or more predetermined sizes (e.g., square thumbnails). Thus, conventional systems are able to condense the images to save visual space and maximize the number of thumbnails shown per page.
While conventional systems can provide a useful layout with an aesthetically pleasing, easily reviewable format, these systems often generate thumbnails by cropping to the centers of the digital images. This approach, however, fails to account for the interests of the user that captured the digital images. In particular, users often employ photographing techniques that place the subjects of interest in a digital image away from the center of the digital image. Accordingly, thumbnails generated by conventional systems frequently exclude subjects of interest from the original digital images. For example, applying conventional systems to a digital image that portrays a person along one side of the digital image often results in a thumbnail that partially or fully removes the person from view. Cropping the subjects of interest from the thumbnails can make it difficult for users to determine the content of digital images and manage repositories of digital visual media.
These and other disadvantages exist with respect to conventional image management systems.